Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Bruce Schneier writes that airport security needs to be evaluated on the basis of concrete costs and benefits and not continued to be implemented as security theater based on fear.

John P. Holdren won the 2018 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize. He delivered the annual Moynihan Lecture on May 17, 2018, at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Cyber Security Project Director Michael Sulmeyer and Project Affiliate Charley Snyder analyze the purported draft of President Trump's first executive order covering cybersecurity issues, leaked to the Washington Post and released on Friday, January 27, 2017.

Cyber Security Project Director Michael Sulmeyer and Project Affiliate Charley Snyder examine some of the most important provisions to the recently signed into law 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that the Trump Administration must grapple with during its first year in office.

Cyber Security Project Fellow Dr. Ben Buchanan discusses how the traditional concept of the "security dilemma" applies to conflict in cyberspace, arguing that as states play offense and defense in the digital domain, they risk tension no one wants.

"This article examines how executive power translates in cyberspace and assesses the president's ability to reconfigure U.S. network data flows to the global Internet during a national crisis."

As assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Holdren has worked closely with Obama to reinvigorate America’s scientific capabilities on a range of policy fronts, from climate change and renewable energy to health care and nanotechnology.

"Russia was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee's computer network that led to the release of thousands of internal emails just before the party's convention began, U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded."

In a new report from the Project on Managing the Atom, Senior Research Associate Hui Zhang finds that China has made important nuclear security improvements in areas ranging from its legal framework, to its approaches to physical protection and material accounting, to bolstering nuclear security culture. But China also faces ongoing threats. The possibility of insider theft of nuclear materials in China cannot be ruled out, espe­cially as China increasingly grows into a market-oriented society contending with corruption. Zhang also notes that Beijing faces a growing terrorism threat from separatists in China’s autonomous Xinjiang region.

The Project on Managing the Atom offers fellowships for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career researchers for one year, with a possibility for renewal, in the stimulating environment of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The online application for 2016-2017 fellowships opened December 15, 2015, and the application deadline is January 15, 2016. Recommendation letters are due by February 1, 2016.